One of the big lessons I am trying to learn these days is how to fully embrace the slack. As I see it, the problem isn’t in having a lazy day where you don’t work out or even move much. Nor is it a problem to have a less-than-ideal diet on these days. No, these things are normal and fine. The problem is with spending these rare days thinking of how you need to get moving, cook some veggies and really any minute now you should be doing this and maybe once Dr Oz is over and hey, let’s have another twizzler and look it’s time for the shame spiral!
A consequence of this constant internal admonition to *not* ever be lazy is that I don’t ever fully relax even when I don’t manage to get anything done. Which means that I fail at doing nothing. Wow. Great.
Instead, I’m trying to, when I encounter a day that is perfect for slack, to take a real look at what things I want to accomplish. Are any of these things something that can’t wait? Are any of these things going to get in the way of my enjoying a responsibility-free day? If so, then I go ahead and do those before I embrace the slack. And when I say embrace, I mean fully enjoy. Silencing that voice that loves to list the things I could be doing and focusing on doing whatever I want. Being okay with looking back over my day and seeing nothing but an empty bag of twizzlers, some diet root beer and scattered Battlestar Galactica dvd cases (allowing of course that spending most of my time this way would be depressing.)
One of the big lessons I am trying to learn these days is how to fully embrace the slack. As I see it, the problem isn’t in having a lazy day where you don’t work out or even move much. Nor is it a problem to have a less-than-ideal diet on these days. No, these things are normal and fine. The problem is with spending these rare days thinking of how you need to get moving, cook some veggies and really any minute now you should be doing this and maybe once Dr Oz is over and hey, let’s have another twizzler and look it’s time for the shame spiral!
A consequence of this constant internal admonition to *not* ever be lazy is that I don’t ever fully relax even when I don’t manage to get anything done. Which means that I fail at doing nothing. Wow. Great.
Instead, I’m trying to, when I encounter a day that is perfect for slack, to take a real look at what things I want to accomplish. Are any of these things something that can’t wait? Are any of these things going to get in the way of my enjoying a responsibility-free day? If so, then I go ahead and do those before I embrace the slack. And when I say embrace, I mean fully enjoy. Silencing that voice that loves to list the things I could be doing and focusing on doing whatever I want. Being okay with looking back over my day and seeing nothing but an empty bag of twizzlers, some diet root beer and scattered Battlestar Galactica dvd cases (allowing of course that spending most of my time this way would be depressing.)
I’m finding it surprisingly difficult.